VCS agents:
VCS agent use to communicate to the HAD (high availability daemon) with all the configuration and attributes.For an example, Mount agent should be able to monitor the filesystem and able to mount/umount the filesystem according to the given commands.
Agents are multi-threaded processes that provide the logic to manage resources. VCS has one agent per resource type. The agent monitors all resources of that type; for example, a mount agent manages all mounts resources.When the agent is started, it obtains the necessary configuration information from VCS. It then periodically monitors the resources, and updates VCS with the resource status.
You may have the below questions in your mind about VCS agents.Its better know what it is and what actually it does .
Who provides the VCS agents ?
The blow mentioned resource agents are shipped along with VCS. If the agents are not starting then ,you need to contact Symantec to fix the issue.
1.Oracle
2.Sysbase
3.LDOM
4.IP
5.NIC
6.Zone
7.Application
and many more.
Symantec also provides additional developed agents to support various applications on VCS. For an example,you want to cluster the SAP application ,you need a SAP agents .But in some cases original software vendor will provide the agents for VCS(independent software vendor ISV).
What are the VCS agents Properties?
Who provides the VCS agents ?
The blow mentioned resource agents are shipped along with VCS. If the agents are not starting then ,you need to contact Symantec to fix the issue.
1.Oracle
2.Sysbase
3.LDOM
4.IP
5.NIC
6.Zone
7.Application
and many more.
Symantec also provides additional developed agents to support various applications on VCS. For an example,you want to cluster the SAP application ,you need a SAP agents .But in some cases original software vendor will provide the agents for VCS(independent software vendor ISV).
What are the VCS agents Properties?
1.Only one agent daemon runs on a system for each configured resource type.
2.An agent runs a single operation on a resource at one time.
3.Agents can perform operation on multiple resources of the same type in parallel.
4.If there are no resource of a particular type anywhere in the cluster,the agent for that type is not started.
5.A resource cannot be managed without an agent.
2.An agent runs a single operation on a resource at one time.
3.Agents can perform operation on multiple resources of the same type in parallel.
4.If there are no resource of a particular type anywhere in the cluster,the agent for that type is not started.
5.A resource cannot be managed without an agent.
What are the VCS agents functions ?
1.Start a specified program
2.Stop a specified program
3.Monitor the program
4.Clean up after a fault.
2.Stop a specified program
3.Monitor the program
4.Clean up after a fault.
How it formed ?
1.An agent binary file,which contains all necessary function within single binary to control the resource.
2.An agent binary and a collection of scripts that correspond to agent function not included in the binary.
Issues with VCS agents:
In Production environment ,we may face the below issue very often.Here we will see how to fix that issue.
VCS-Switch over issue due to failed agent
VCS error: V-16-1-10195, resulting from failed fail-over of service group.
The failover of a service group fails, and hastatus -sum shows that an agent is ‘failed‘ on the system the service group is to failover to.
Example of hastatus -sum output:
-- AGENTS FAILED
-- Type System
I IPMultiNIC node1
This is issue can be resolved by issuing the following command.It will just stat VCS agent if it failed abnormally or stopped for unknown reason.
# haagent -start IPMultiNIC -sys node1
This command is applicable for all the VCS agents which was showing failed in hastatus output.Here i have just shown the example with “IPMultiNic”.Resourse agent can be anything like Mount,DiskGroup,Volume etc…
Thank you for reading this article.Please leave comment if you have any doubt.I will get back to you.